Tuesday, 26 March 2013

Nobody can accuse Albania of not taking risks in Eurovision.
This is after all the country which came 5th last year with a
dreadlocked jazz singer who spent almost half of her three minutes singing the
same syllable up and down the scales and who saw fit to once put their
principal dancer in a green gimp mask. This year the risk is to send a rock
song, a genre not know to set the scoreboard alight unless you’re Finnish and
dressed up as a monster. In the video Adrian and Bledar have snuck their band
into a building site in downtown Tirana without so much as a nod to a workman’s
helmet (suggesting the main draw for immigration into the UK might not be
economic but merely a desire to enjoy some decent health and safety
legislation). There they bang out their rock number with a hint of Balkan
instrumentation. I fear this won’t capture the televoting imagination and the
chaps don’t seem to make the best of their presentation; Bledar’s lank hair
lends him the look of a 1970s pub band member who probably hails from
Wolverhampton and coupling him with Adrian is a most unlikely pairing.
Musically it’s not unpleasant, should you like that kind of thing, but frankly
I don’t and I can’t see this making the final.